Redde Rationem
by erinn80
Summary: A small story that I wrote for a contest...I had to think a plot for the third X-Files movie


Hi! This is the first ff that I've ever written in my life. I wrote it for an Italian contest: I had to image a plot for the XF3...then I translated it in English for a contest on XFU and I won as Best second language ff. Well, let me know your opinions...

**X-Files: Redde Rationem**

_Prologue_: Mulder was "forgiven" by the FBI, but he continues to live in his isolated house in West Virginia, despite he sometimes works as a consultant in some investigations. Scully continues her job as a doctor.

It's Thursday, the 13th of December in 2012. It's late at night. Mulder and Scully are sleeping when they hear someone pounding at the door. Reluctantly Mulder gets up and opens the door to a surprise visit. In front of him the full moon illuminates Gibson Praise's face. Certainly, he is now older and terribly thin, but it is him. Mulder doesn't have any doubts about this. He invites him in the house and in the meantime Scully offers to prepare him a cup of tea. Without further delay, Gibson says that he is in hurry. They have limited time and need to move quickly if they want to avoid the tragedy. They have to immediately leave with him and explanations will be done during the long journey in the car. Looking at each other, Mulder and Scully are hesitant in how to respond. But Scully is the first to answer: she doesn't want to be part of this. She has cut her ties with the FBI and all its plots. There's _nothing_ that can _change her mind_. At this point Mulder is caught in between: his curiosity is strong, but, on the other hand, he suspects that this affair can turn him away forever from Scully.

Reading their thoughts, Gibson understands that there is only a way to convince them both to go away with him. Just a name, a simple name: William. He notifies them that the child's life is in danger and that they have to act quickly to save him.

With enough time to gather what they needed, the three are ready to start the journey. Gibson informs them that their final destination is the Wyoming State, therefore, they have more than 1,700 miles to go and by taking turn in driving, they can arrive at their destination by Friday morning.

During the trip Gibson tells them all the information. Then in various flash-back they become aware of the different pieces of the puzzle.

_William_: until he was 3 years old he has had a happy life with his adoptive parents, who then died in a car accident. In the following years he has being going from one foster family to another. Now he has been living in a house-family for 2 years. Private of his parents' love, William is a child closed in him, who sometimes doesn't control his mysterious telekinetic powers. Other children avoid him due to this. But he is the key to stop the alien invasion planned for next week.

_Gibson_: as promised, the agent Doggett has kept him hidden from the alien bounty hunters and the super-soldiers. In the past few years he has had to move constantly to avoid to be captured. Some years ago in a Navajo village he met up with one of the last alien rebels who opposed the plans of the alien Colonists. He was at the end of his life, but, reading his mind, Gibson has come to knowledge of their plan to definitely destroy the Colonists and this is tied up to William. During the following years he has tried to track the place where the child lived. He has had to resort to his powers on the various employees and social assistants to break the bureaucracy of the Social Services.

Now the _super-soldiers_ have taken the control of the New Syndicate and they are installed into positions of power in many countries, preparing everything needed to facilitate the colonization.

Finally the three arrive at their destination: a small school in Wyoming. Gibson says that they must take the child, but they have to do in a hurry so as not to attract attention. By exploiting its ability to read the mind, Gibson goes close to the school bus just arriving in the square and talks to William. Telling him that he has just found some puppies of Labrador and asks him if he wants to come with him to see them. Intrigued, the child overcomes his initial distrust and follows Gibson, who injects a sedative in him the first chance he gets. Gibson carries him quickly in the car next to Scully. Then he puts it in motion and moves away at full throttle.

While they are continuing the journey, Scully cannot take her eyes away from her son and reminisce the events that preceded and followed his birth. She has given up the idea that she would never see him anymore, and instead he is there now in her arms, but once more his life is in danger.

After about an hour Gibson stops in a small isolated house, saying that the effect of the sedative is almost finished and that they would have to talk to the child and to try to reassure him, because surely he would not have appreciated the fact of waking up between strangers be miles away from his home. As they continued to talk, William wakes up and is frightened. He is convinced that he has been kidnapped and does not want to hear what they have to say. He wants to return home. Scully is destroyed, she wants to tell him that she is his mother, but she is afraid that the child will reject her.

Then Gibson decides that for now it is better to support the conviction of the child of the kidnapping, because the fear will mean that he will follow them more docilely.

They get back on the road towards the south and Gibson drives without stopping for several hours until in the evening they arrive at a mountain village in Colorado. A couple of times during the refuelling of gasoline William has tried to run away or to tell a shopkeeper that they had kidnapped him, but Mulder succeeds in preventing such childish conversations to be credible.

Now, Mulder and Scully have no choice but to tell William that they are his parents. Not only this news would be upsetting for the child, but also difficult as it relates to the X-Files, the mystery tied up to his birth and the attempt of alien colonization After all he is only a 11 year-old child!

Just as predicted, William's reaction is of refusal and denial. He affirms that his parents died when he was 3 years-old, that they don't mean anything to him and that he will never accept them as his parents. Besides, why should he believe in what they say? There is no such thing as alien. Might as well tell him that the Boogieman also exists!

Being able to dig in William's mind, Gibson tells some episodes of his life in which his paranormal powers have occurred. He tells him that he knows he has always being different and special, even though this fact might frighten him. The moment of truth has come. Since the matter concerns William, might as well explain to them everything.

Gibson communicates the shocking truth: the alien rebels have installed in William's brain a micro-capsule which contains a special virus. When it is released it makes the human being immune to the deadly virus that the aliens are preparing to spread and, at the same time, it destabilizes the DNA of all the aliens on Earth and also those who will try to set foot on it in the future. This capsule interacts with the nervous centers of William's brain and it is for this reason that the child has special paranormal abilities, and not because he is partly alien.

To prevent the aliens to find this antidote and try to modify the virus, the rebels have hidden it inside William and planned to open the capsule on 19th December 2012. The virus would be so quickly transmitted among the world-wide population that the attempt of colonization would be save. A genius plan indeed, but the opening of the capsule will cause a cerebral haemorrhage in William and be the main cause of his death. The only way to avoid this is to try a removal operation in William's brain before the capsule opens, but this is risky on two fronts. First, the capsule could be damaged and the destruction of the virus would bring the end of humankind. Second, even if this will not occur, William won't be able to survive the intervention. If he's lucky, he can survive but forever remain in a vegetable state.

Gibson has obtained this information and felt obliged to try to save the child's life, because the situation reminds him of his traumatic childhood, and the appreciation he feels for Mulder and Scully. Ultimately, he leaves them the task of making a decision on it.

Scully is shocked by this revelation. To try to save the life of her son with the risk of destroying the only weapon able to stop the aliens, or letting the capsule break for the good of humanity and loosing her son forever? How could she make a decision on the matter?

Obviously both she and Mulder could not sleep that night and the next day they communicate to Gibson that they want to try the operation. Gibson has foreseen their answers and he has already arranged everything. He contacted the only person on the FBI whom they can trust: the assistant director Skinner. Without asking for further details of the story, he carried out Gibson's requests. Therefore, they take leave to Arkansas, where a team of doctors and nurses of proven trust will attend them at a hospital of a small military base abandoned recently.

In the meantime, the members of the Syndicate are certain that nothing will hinder their plans of colonization, when they are informed that Scully and Mulder have left their house in West Virginia, In the past years they were convinced that the two ex-agents didn't constitute as a threat for them and they had decided that it was unnecessary to eliminate them. Their death would have just turned the attention to their work. But now, one step away from achieving their goal, they ask if this has been a mistake. They decide, therefore, this would be a good opportunity to chase after them to monitor their moves. Hence, some super-soldiers are sent on their traces.

With a small airplane piloted by Gibson, Mulder, Scully and William go to Arkansas and during the flight the two ex-agents, and Scully in particular, try to establish a relationship with William who is still unfriendly towards them. They come near Magnet Cove. This place has not been chosen at random by Gibson. In fact, in the area there is a large deposit of magnetite and that should save them from the super-soldiers. Scully immediately begins to carry out analysis on the child to see the position of the micro-capsule in his brain. The tests also continue throughout the next day until the formality of the intervention is decided, which is scheduled for Sunday, the 16th of December. In the meantime, the protective shield that William had built began to weaken and the child begins to have more confidence in his real parents.

The intervention lasts for the whole day. Scully succeeds in removing the micro-capsule without damaging it, but when the intervention seems to have succeeded a complication occurs and the child comes into a coma. Meanwhile Gibson informs Mulder that the super-soldiers are now one step away from them. In Magnet Cove they are relatively safe, but they two have to go away for two reasons: first, whether the super-soldiers chasing them, Scully and the child will run less risk and besides, to facilitate the diffusion of the virus to planetary level, the best solution is to ensure that the capsule will open in an airport. The most suitable is the Houston airport, which is very close.

The next morning, Mulder is forced to leave Scully and William, even not knowing if the child will survive.

Mulder and Gibson take off in the direction of Houston. In the meantime, some super soldiers are hot on their trail and continue to pursue. Some criminals, who are not aware of their alien nature, surround the base of Magnet Cove to await for further orders.

The New Syndicate is unsure if William could be a threat to them. Once they were convinced of it, but then when he was born they believed that the rebels had not succeeded in their mission, whatever it was. In any case, the child had been given in adoption and they had not been able to perform further investigations on the matter.

Both the super-soldiers and the criminals have the order to kill them all. It's better to have all scenarios covered now that the invasion is imminent.

A missile hits the airplane on which Mulder and Gibson are on, but the boy succeeds in making an emergency landing on the Kisatchie National Forest. Both Mulder and Gibson are slightly injured, but that is not their biggest problem: they are in a hostile territory and they need to pick up their pace before the super-soldiers find their traces. They'll have to go on foot from here on and leave the forest to arrive at Houston. Only 2 more days before the opening of the capsule. They can't let it be destroyed before that date. Gibson then shows Mulder some projectiles made of magnetite. They are their only weapon of defence against super-soldiers, but they have only a dozen of them. They will have to use them wisely.

Meanwhile at Magnet Cove, the henchmen of the super-soldiers are trying to give the assault to the hospital. To their surprise, the doctors and nurses stationed there are also excellent soldiers. The battle is hard but in the end they annihilate their assailants. It's Scully who kills the last man who almost set foot in her son's room.

Mulder and Gibson advance with difficulty through the dense forest and the boy feels that the super-soldiers are becoming closer. Then the inevitable confrontation comes. At the end, Mulder succeeds in killing one of them while the other one falls in the river and he is swept away by current. Finally, the two reach a road and stop a car. After advising the driver that they needed to borrow his car for a state emergency, they continue to head towards Houston. Mulder's wound worsens and Gibson is forced to stop at a motel to try to stop the haemorrhage and then they spend the night there.

The next morning came and they are only few hours away from the airport. Just as they were crossing the Texas border, they are welcomed by the super-soldier. Their car gets pushed off the road. Nowhere to escape, Gibson reacts quickly by grabbing Mulder's gun and kills off the alien.

After several mishaps the two arrive in Houston. At the stroke of midnight, the capsule opens between the hands of Mulder and he wonders how such a minuscule object can be the salvation for the whole world. In any case, he has only one way to verify if the virus of the rebels works. They need to place it in the New Syndicate's heart: Washington!

He and Gibson find a flight and in the afternoon of 19th December 2012 they arrive in the Capital. At the airport, Skinner welcomes them. Mulder sums up the situation and asks him to protect Gibson while he goes to the FBI headquarter. He wants a face-to-face confrontation with the members of the conspiracy.

As expected, Mulder is allowed to enter and brought in the presence of the various people, who over the years have hampered his work and in the end condemned him to death. They try not to show it, but they are worried; they want to know what he is planning. Even with the torture they can get any answers from him. After 24 hours they are convinced that their concerns are unfounded. Now nothing will hinder their plan and so they decide to explain it to Mulder.

It is very simple plan. The only way to spread a virus to planetary level is to insert it into a drug! In these years they have helped to spread the avian flu outbreaks and to foment fear in people. In the meantime their members control a powerful pharmaceutical company, who has begun the procedures to obtain approval of their presumed vaccine from the American Food and Drug Administration and equivalent governmental branches from countries. By now they had succeeded. That day the distribution of vaccine throughout the world has begun and within 22nd December 2012 the human race would have no longer existed. The virus would have destroyed them from the inside and their bodies would have been replaced by that of an alien. Mulder now knows the truth and he will be a tested of the virus. They do an injection in him, but to their dismay, nothing happens! Instead, they start getting sick and die. In the end the virus of alien rebels wins!

Mulder manages to escape from the place where they had imprisoned him and reach the home of Skinner and he finds Gibson dying. The boy explains that he knew that it would happen. Even his DNA has been partially modified with alien DNA, and now the virus is killing him. However, he is happy to have succeeded in saving the population of the Earth and he tells Mulder to go back to Scully and his son and be happy as the truth is finally discovered.

_Newscasts of __different States spread the news of the sudden and strangely close deaths of important members of industry, governments and military forces from various countries of the world. _

_Epilogue_: For the first time in years Dana Scully feels the need to pray God, she has to ask him to save the life of his son and so she goes to the chapel of the small hospital and it is there that Mulder finds her at dawn on 22nd December 2012, returning from Washington. Between the two there is no need for words, humanity is now save but the life of their child is hanging by a thread. Together they go to the child's room and they watch over him, when he slowly opens his blue eyes and pronounces the only word that Scully has desired to hear for years: Mum!


End file.
